Investigating Gender and Number Similarities and Differences between Standard English and Arabic

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present the similarities and differences in gender and number between standard English and standard Arabic. As it is known that in learning English there are many mistakes which occur as a result of the interference of the mother tongue especially on grammar level. To overcome this problem contrastive analysis is used to show the similarities and differences. The method which the researcher used is the "Immediate Constituent Analysis" which aims to analyze the sentences structure. The main findings are that both languages have gender and number system. English has three kinds of genders: masculine, feminine, and neutral, while Arabic has two kinds: masculine and feminine. In number, Arabic has three kinds: singular, dual, and plural, whereas, English has two kinds: singular and plural. The researcher recommends that, Sudanese teachers should be aware of the differences in gender and number between English and Arabic, and teachers should use contrastive analysis for teaching foreign languages.